Gay Developers Boycott As Mozilla Appoints Allegedly Anti-Gay CEO

​A pair of married gay Firefox developers, Hampton Catlin and his husband Michael, are publicly boycotting Mozilla following the announcement that the company has appointed Brendan Eich as its new CEO.

It was revealed that Eich donated $1000 to the Proposition 8 campaign in California, which took away same-sex couples' right to marry in the state until its overturn by the Supreme Court.

"Today we were shocked to read that Brendan Eich has been appointed Mozilla CEO. As a gay couple who were unable to get married in California until recently, we morally cannot support a Foundation that would not only leave someone with hateful views in power, but will give them a promotion and put them in charge of the entire organization", says Hampton Catlin.

Catlin further explains, "I certainly recognize that there are great people at Mozilla. And that lots of people there want the org to be open and supportive. However, the board could have chosen ANY of those other, awesome people at Mozilla to be CEO. Hey, I've got a crazy idea, how about a woman at Mozilla? Nope. Out of all the possible candidates they could have chosen, they chose Brendan Eich. CEO's are extremely important to an organization. Their ideas, beliefs, philosophies, and personalities drive organizations".

Catlin wrote the following letter to Mozilla:

Dear Mozilla,

As a married gay couple who are co-founders of this venture, we have chosen to boycott all Mozilla projects. We will not develop apps or test styles on Firefox anymore.

Effective today, we're removing Color Puzzle from the Firefox Marketplace and stopping work on all of our Firefox-related applications, notably the about-to-launch Firefox version of the popular Dictionary! app for iPhone and Android.

This is in protest of the appointment of Brendan Eich to the position of CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, where he had previously served as CTO.

We will continue our boycott until Brendan Eich is completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla, which we believe is extremely unlikely after all he’s survived and the continued support he has received from Mozilla.

This makes us very sad, as we love the little guy fighting to make things better. But it’s because of our status as a minority that we simply can’t ignore this slap in the face of giving him a promotion to lead your organization.

Sincerely,

Hampton Catlin

What do you think of their decision to boycott Mozilla, Instincters? Do you think it will have an impact on the company's decisions? Was Mozilla wrong to appoint a CEO that donated against marriage equality?

A boycott by all gay and gay positive developers, programmers etc as well as the Gay Public not downloading or purchasing anything from Mozilla and deleting what they already have would help matters. The LGBT community does have the power to change things, and a company like Mozilla would feel the boycott in their bottom line and that would make the shareholders unhappy as well as the Board of Directors. And that could spell his being ousted from the CEO position.

Good for this couple. Use what leverage you have. There's absolutely no reason to allow a new CEO to get settled into a role where he will have access to influence and money. It's best to purge him now before he can get rooted within the company.